Rocky Hill Ranch Trail

Rocky Hill Ranch Trail is a 10.4 mile loop trail located near Smithville, TX that features beautiful wild flowers and is rated as moderate. The trail offers a number of activity options and is accessible year-round.

This is by far the best trail around if you are looking for up and down terrain. Trails are marked pretty well and lots of different ones to ride on. I think I'm in pretty good shape but this kicked my butt. I rode 18.2 miles and I felt all of it because the up and down. Lots of shade on single track and then a lot of double track trails out of the trees. Plenty of views to look at.

We found our way to Rocky Hill Ranch after we ran out of trails at Bastrop State Park just down the road. The 'Ranch' could be better described as a commercial mountain biking and outdoor events facility. By all appearances someone bought a large plot of land and decided to charge a rather steep $20 per person admission for playing around on it. At least on this particular Saturday the fee was assessed on the honor system at a shack of a building that has a pair of primitive bathrooms. Unfortunately, the shed was out of maps, but the trails were fairly well and colorfully marked. Still, they would have provided some peace of mind for a pair of directionally-challenged trail runners out on the 25 miles of mostly single-track mountain bike trails that had a decent amount of elevation change for this side of Austin. The cost aside, Rocky Hill Ranch provided a beautiful (fairly) green reprieve from the ashen Bastrop. Also, it's maddeningly hard to find, since it wasn't on Yelp and the G Maps and AllTrails addresses were wrong.